Airbnb is cracking down on pre-Halloween party home rentals for the second year in a row, the company announced Monday. The announcement came just over a week after a party on one of his slates in North Oakland ended in gunfire, killing two teenage brothers.
The short-term rental company said it plans to prevent customers who don’t have a history of positive reviews from booking entire homes over Halloween weekend. Airbnb said people without a history of positive reviews will not be able to rent entire homes for a single night over Halloween weekend, make “last minute reservations” or reserve properties “in a certain location”. Anyone booking this weekend must sign the company rules prohibiting parties.
The company said the measures were first introduced over Halloween weekend last year, resulting in more than a third drop in unauthorized parties at its properties in the United States and the United States. Canada. More precise data, however, have not been published.
They are among several moves the company has taken in recent years to ban parties at its residences, amid scrutiny of numerous shootings at properties listed by its service.
It was unclear Monday afternoon exactly whether the company’s latest rules would have prevented booking the party that ended in gunfire earlier this month in North Oakland.
At approximately 9:45 p.m. on October 1, at least two shooters entered a duplex in the 900 block of Apgar Street and opened fire. Two Berkeley High School students — Jazy Sotelo Garcia, 17, and her younger brother, Angel Sotelo Garcia, 15 — died at the scene. Two other teenagers were hospitalized with gunshot wounds.
No arrests have been announced in the shooting.
The gunshots interrupted a birthday party attended by at least 30 people for a 17-year-old girl. The rental had been booked by the girl’s parent, said Oakland Police Chief LeRonne Armstrong, who added that the rally was for “a select group of people, but obviously the information has been passed on to others”. As of early last week, police had not determined whether the parent was at the party when the shooting began.
Airbnb said the party was “unauthorized” and was held without the knowledge or consent of the property’s host. The company has not released further details about who booked the listing, but it said last week that the booking guest had been removed from its platform and the listing had been deactivated “while we investigate further”.
City of Oakland officials have not responded to repeated inquiries from this news agency over the past week about whether any city codes were violated during this Airbnb rental.
The shooting came about a year after another fatal shooting at an Airbnb rental in Sunnyvale. In the incident, two people were shot – one fatally – as 150 people crowded the house for a party which had been advertised on social media.
This was at least the fourth shooting at an Airbnb party home in Northern California in recent years. Another such shooting at an Airbnb in Orinda killed five people on Halloween in 2019.
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